(CNN) -- A student opening fire with a handgun he took from his parents. Screaming students running for cover. A teacher, trying to help, shot dead. Two students wounded. The terror lasted just a few brutal minutes.

As authorities investigated, details were still trickling out hours after a deadly shooting Monday at a Nevada middle school.

One official described the scene at Sparks Middle School with one word: chaos.
Students described to CNN how they ran into the school screaming and crying when they realized the pops they heard were gunshots just before the morning bell welcomed them back from fall break.

The shooter took a handgun from his parents, a federal law enforcement source who was briefed on the situation told CNN's Evan Perez.

SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — A student at a Nevada middle school opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun on campus just before the starting bell Monday, wounding two 12-year-old boys and killing a math teacher who was trying to protect children from their classmate.

The unidentified shooter killed himself with the gun after a rampage that occurred in front of 20 to 30 horrified students who had just returned to school from a weeklong fall break. Authorities did not provide a motive for the shooting, and it's unknown where the student got the gun.

There is an epidemic of gun violence in the US. To put it in perspective, England reports 45 gun homicides per year. England’s culture is similar to ours— they hunt, collect guns, value marksmanship; they have gangs, drugs and poverty. Our population is 5 times England’s, 300 million vs. 60 million.

If we had England’s gun laws, which are based on public safety, we could expect 5 times their gun homicides or 225 gun homicides per year.

WHY?

Because American gun laws are based on maximizing sales for the gun industry, not public safety.

As a result, our gun laws are not sane.
We have 10,000, over 4,300% more.

There are fewer guns around in the general population of England - But if you were to look at the number of homicides they come very close in numbers as the USA. Yes this does take into account ALL of the homicides in the USA not just gun fatalities.

Since Cain went nuts and whacked Abel, there have always been those humans who, for one reason or another, go temporarily or permanently insane and commit unspeakable acts of violence. There was the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who during the first century A.D. enjoyed throwing victims off a cliff on the Mediterranean island of Capri. Gilles de Rais, a French knight and ally of Joan of Arc during the middle ages, went cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs one day and ended up murdering hundreds of children. Just a few decades later Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, was killing people in Transylvania in numberless horrifying ways.

In modern times, nearly every nation has had a psychopath or two commit a mass murder, regardless of how strict their gun laws are – the crazed white supremacist in Norway one year ago Sunday, the schoolyard butcher in Dunblane, Scotland, the École Polytechnique killer in Montreal, the mass murderer in Erfurt, Germany … the list seems endless.

And now the Aurora shooter last Friday. There have always been insane people, and there always will be.

But here's the difference between the rest of the world and us: We have TWO Auroras that take place every single day of every single year! At least 24 Americans every day (8-9,000 a year) are killed by people with guns – and that doesn't count the ones accidentally killed by guns or who commit suicide with a gun. Count them and you can triple that number to over 25,000.

That means the United States is responsible for over 80% of all the gun deaths in the 23 richest countries combined. Considering that the people of those countries, as human beings, are no better or worse than any of us, well, then, why us?

Both conservatives and liberals in America operate with firmly held beliefs as to "the why" of this problem. And the reason neither can find their way out of the box toward a real solution is because, in fact, they're both half right.

The right believes that the Founding Fathers, through some sort of divine decree, have guaranteed them the absolute right to own as many guns as they desire. And they will ceaselessly remind you that a gun cannot fire itself – that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Of course, they know they're being intellectually dishonest (if I can use that word) when they say that about the Second Amendment because they know the men who wrote the constitution just wanted to make sure a militia could be quickly called up from amongst the farmers and merchants should the Brits decide to return and wreak some havoc.

But they are half right when they say "Guns don't kill people." I would just alter that slogan slightly to speak the real truth: "Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people."

Because we're the only ones in the first world who do this en masse. And you'll hear all stripes of Americans come up with a host of reasons so that they don't have to deal with what's really behind all this murder and mayhem.

They'll say it's the violent movies and video games that are responsible. Last time I checked, the movies and video games in Japan are more violent than ours – and yet usually fewer than 20 people a year are killed there with guns – and in 2006 the number was two!

Others will say it's the number of broken homes that lead to all this killing. I hate to break this to you, but there are almost as many single-parent homes in the U.K. as there are here – and yet, in Great Britain, there are usually fewer than 40 gun murders a year.

People like me will say this is all the result of the U.S. having a history and a culture of men with guns, "cowboys and Indians," "shoot first and ask questions later." And while it is true that the mass genocide of the Native Americans set a pretty ugly model to found a country on, I think it's safe to say we're not the only ones with a violent past or a penchant for genocide. Hello, Germany! That's right I'm talking about you and your history, from the Huns to the Nazis, just loving a good slaughter (as did the Japanese, and the British who ruled the world for hundreds of years – and they didn't achieve that through planting daisies). And yet in Germany, a nation of 80 million people, there are only around 200 gun murders a year.

So those countries (and many others) are just like us – except for the fact that more people here believe in God and go to church than any other Western nation.

My liberal compatriots will tell you if we just had less guns, there would be less gun deaths. And, mathematically, that would be true. If you have less arsenic in the water supply, it will kill less people. Less of anything bad – calories, smoking, reality TV – will kill far fewer people. And if we had strong gun laws that prohibited automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banned the sale of large magazines that can hold a gazillion bullets, well, then shooters like the man in Aurora would not be able to shoot so many people in just a few minutes.

But this, too, has a problem. There are plenty of guns in Canada (mostly hunting rifles) – and yet the annual gun murder count in Canada is around 200 deaths. In fact, because of its proximity, Canada's culture is very similar to ours – the kids play the same violent video games, watch the same movies and TV shows, and yet they don't grow up wanting to kill each other. Switzerland has the third-highest number of guns per capita on earth, but still a low murder rate.

So – why us?

I posed this question a decade ago in my film 'Bowling for Columbine,' and this week, I have had little to say because I feel I said what I had to say ten years ago – and it doesn't seem to have done a whole lot of good other than to now look like it was actually a crystal ball posing as a movie.

This is what I said then, and it is what I will say again today:

1.) We Americans are incredibly good killers. We believe in killing as a way of accomplishing our goals. Three-quarters of our states execute criminals, even though the states with the lower murder rates are generally the states with no death penalty.

Our killing is not just historical (the slaughter of Indians and slaves and each other in a "civil" war). It is our current way of resolving whatever it is we're afraid of. It's invasion as foreign policy. Sure there's Iraq and Afghanistan – but we've been invaders since we "conquered the wild west" and now we're hooked so bad we don't even know where to invade (bin Laden wasn't hiding in Afghanistan, he was in Pakistan) or what to invade for (Saddam had zero weapons of mass destruction and nothing to do with 9/11). We send our lower classes off to do the killing, and the rest of us who don't have a loved one over there don't spend a single minute of any given day thinking about the carnage. And now we send in remote pilotless planes to kill, planes that are being controlled by faceless men in a lush, air conditioned studio in suburban Las Vegas. It is madness.

2.) We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear. What are we so afraid of that we need to have 300 million guns in our homes? Who do we think is going to hurt us? Why are most of these guns in white suburban and rural homes? Maybe we should fix our race problem and our poverty problem (again, #1 in the industrialized world) and then maybe there would be fewer frustrated, frightened, angry people reaching for the gun in the drawer. Maybe we would take better care of each other (here's a good example of what I mean).

Those are my thoughts about Aurora and the violent country I am a citizen of. Like I said, I spelled it all out here if you'd like to watch it or share it for free with others. All we're lacking here, my friends, is the courage and the resolve. I'm in if you are.

It’s every employer’s worst nightmare. An angry employee with a gun takes out his revenge on a boss, coworkers or both.

Last year, Andrew J. Engeldinger did it when he killed five and injured three after being fired from his job at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis. Lawrence Jones did it when he killed two coworkers and wounded two others at a Fresno chicken processing plant. The year before, Rocky T. Christian, did it when he shot and killed his boss at Build Direct Floor, LLC in Apopka, Florida. Let’s bring guns to work!

Last year, 375 employees were shot and killed on the job, says the Department of Labor. If you are an employee, you are five times as likely to be shot to death at work if your employer allows guns says an American Journal of Public Healthstudy.

Gun advocates have pushed through laws letting people bring their guns to work, storing them in their cars, in 22 states. The NRA says an Alabama version of the law, which went into effect this summer, "extends the current Castle Doctrine to include places of business to ensure the right of self-defense does not end when you enter your business."

Employers see it differently. "Allowing employees to have near, immediate access to firearms, at work, creates an element of risk that is unacceptable," said Mark Hogan, FedEx’s vice president for security, in testimony last year before Tennessee lawmakers. “Much like a private homeowner is able to tell his guests whether they can bring a gun into his yard, FedEx should have the right to decide what it will and will not allow on its private property,” says Hogan. Volkswagen, Caterpillar and Bridgestone have joined FedEx in opposing the expansionistic gun laws.

Forcing property owners to allow guns is so intrusive, even an NRA member objected when the laws began surfacing eight years ago. Bob Thornton, a former liquor store owner, actually heckled NRA leader Wayne LaPierre at an Atlanta news conference which announced the campaign. "I really object to the government getting involved to say what's allowed on my property," he said, sporting a "Wayne Never Asked Me" T-shirt.

Joe Fleming, senior vice president for government affairs at the Georgia Chamber of Commerce agreed in a 2008 newspaper oped. The NRA has "threatened all Georgia senators who fail to fall on bended knee with ‘F's’ on the next NRA re-election scorecard," he wrote. “Those senators who don't succumb to the NRA's bully-tactics, name-calling, temper tantrums, insults and lies will be subjected to election-year retaliation." The Florida Retail Federation and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida also opposed the coercive gun laws which force property owners to take on risks not their own.

As always, the NRA tries to make gun carriers victims instead of aggressors. Banning weapons on parking lots “is a wrecking ball for the Second Amendment,” pronounced Wayne LaPierre. “It's also a blueprint for totally eviscerating and nullifying right-to-carry legislation in 38 states in our country," because despite the “constitutional right to have a firearm” carriers “couldn’t stop anywhere.”

Of course safety and insurance-minded property owners say that is exactly the point. Like cigarettes, you can have your gun at home but don’t even think of bringing it in here. Why should employees and customers be exposed to a 500 percent increase in their gunshot risk because carriers are afraid to go places without their guns? Lawmaker may be muzzled by the gun lobby but corporations aren’t.

Are you DONE ASKING for sane gun laws? Force them! Join the thousands making the TELL AND COMPEL pledge.

National Gun Victims Action Council
(Gun Victims Action) is organized to educate the public about:

1.) The epidemic of gun violence in the United States that results in tens of thousands of gun homicides, suicides and accidental gun-related deaths each year, costing U.S.taxpayers billions of tax dollars.

2.) Why gun violence is a direct consequence of current gun laws.

3.) How sensible gun laws can simultaneously protect the Second Amendment right of the legal gun owner and the rights of non-gun owners to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

4.) The urgent need to find common ground between legal gun owners and non-gun owners that minimizes gun violence in our culture.

BACKGROUND: Polls consistently show there are 100 million Americans that want sane gun laws. They all do one thing in common—they spend money. By focusing their buying power, we can force the legislators to do the right thing instead of asking, presenting all the rational reasons and having, in most cases, virtually no chance to succeed. Polls also consistently show that of the 4 million NRA members, over 75% want sane gun laws. That means there are at most 1 million extremists that do not want any gun laws along with a corrupt NRA leadership.

The outcome is clear; 100 million vs. 1 million is no contest. It is a paradigm shift. Instead of our side only pursuing a strategy of asking legislators to do the right thing, we are adding a strategy of telling legislators to do the right thing and if they do not, then compelling them with an economic lever.

While there are many efforts being exerted by so many to affect sane gun laws, they all come down to asking the politicians to do the right thing. This is essential; the politicians need to know what our side wants. Unfortunately, by itself, this has proven to be a non-winning strategy. In the 19 years since the Brady Background Check law was passed in 1993, despite Columbine, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood, Tucson, Aurora, The Sikh Temple, and now Newtown, not one law has been passed at the Federal level to reduce gun violence. We cannot even get a law passed banning the sale of cop killer bullets (bullets that pierce a police officer’s protective vest. While there have been some victories in a few states, there have been enormous losses in the majority of the States (e.g., guns in bars, churches, the work place, supermarkets—almost everywhere). We cannot reverse this without adding a new strategy.

We are collaborating with the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (over 60 peace fellowships of virtually every religion) and are adding a new strategy to the mix, an economic lever—“Tell and Compel” It cannot be defeated and everybody can easily participate NOW.

Everyone who has heard about Tell and Compel has had their spirits lifted, their energy renewed; they feel personally empowered., they realize they are part of the power to effect the change. We will be identifying targets (states, companies) where our economic lever will be used., e.g., a State, a Company. Doubt this is real? We have done this before with drunk-driving, civil rights, gay rights, labor rights and animal rights. To participate—Read the Tell and Compel Pledge below, and Sign NOW.

I pledge to join forces with the 100 million people in the US who want sane gun laws, including the 14 million who have had direct contact with gun violence, by using my buying power to veto gun-friendly corporations, services, lawmakers and states. The block-buying power of millions of Americans who are both outraged and threatened by the insanity of our current gun laws can and will offset the inertia of politicians who are beholden to the gun lobby. I want to be part of this and pledge to withhold my financial support from corporations, groups, states, who are identified by the coalition as serving the gun extremist minority and not the American people.Our goal is to save lives by enacting gun regulation that allows legal gun owners their Second Amendment rights and non-gun owners their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The NRA has an annual budget of $250 million and will spend endlessly to prevent sane gun laws. Your donation will allow us to counter the NRA and to build a force of a 100 million people strong to force Sane Gun Laws

Writing in Forbes in September, 1958, John D. Williams, a mathematician at the RAND Corporation, suggested the U.S. was getting a little carried away with its interest in auto safety. "I am sure that there is, in effect, a desirable level of automobile accidents -- desirable, that is, from a broad point of view; in the sense that it is a necessary concomitant of things of greater value to society."

Williams continued: "We accept it as a creed that human life is priceless and react involuntarily against anything that kills. In so doing we confuse the values of the individual and of society."

This is essentially the argument of the National Rifle Association more than half a century later -- only turned inside out. Williams viewed society as more or less indifferent to a bit of pointless death now and then so long as cars delivered speed and convenience. Individuals, meanwhile, were deeply invested in saving their own skins. The NRA's position is the inverse: Society's efforts to protect life are oppressive and constitutionally trumped, in any case, by the individual's right to possess and use -- or carelessly leave on the night table -- firearms.

The publication of Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed" in 1965, seven years after Williams's essay, marked a change in public consciousness. The consumer products safety revolution followed along with the creation of federal bureaucracies devoted to protecting air, water and workplace safety, among others. The comprehensive child-proofing of middle-class homes came later still.

The results of the safety revolution can be measured in mortality rates. In 1958, there were 35,331 motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. After a half century of improvements in auto and road safety, that number declined to 32,367 in 2011 even as the population increased by three-fourths. Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles in 1958 were 5.32; by 2011, they had plummeted to 1.1. "Aspirational" brands such as Volvo, Mercedes and BMW now market cars based on their safety ratings.

The gun industry, aided by an ideology-infused gun culture, has resisted even attempting similar gains. Guns currently kill about 30,000 Americans annually -- almost as many as cars -- and injure another 70,000. It's unclear if gun-safety measures could achieve similarly dramatic results as auto-safety initiatives, or with similarly minimal inconvenience. But certainly they could achieve much -- if they were tried. Laws designed to keep guns away from criminals, domestic abusers, drug addicts and others have been thwarted, along with efforts to keep guns away from children. Technological fixes -- such as smart guns using fingerprint scanners -- get little encouragement from the NRA and its backers.

But the death and injury toll from guns is large, and the logic of resistance to safety improvements is small. Eventually, public demands to protect human life will overcome the gun lobby's interest in maximizing gun sales and promoting right-wing ideology. Reckless gun owners and gun dealers will be reined in to protect life, just as the worst cars and most dangerous roads were upgraded. John D. Williams underestimated his fellow citizens' appreciation of life. So does the NRA.

(Francis Wilkinson is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board. Follow him on Twitter.)

(CNN) -- A 2-year-old girl fatally shot herself in Fayetteville, North Carolina, over the weekend, and the toddler's father faces involuntary manslaughter charges, police said.

Melvin Andre Clark Jr., 19, who was arrested Sunday, also was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, Fayetteville police spokesman Lt. Todd Joyce said.

The girl, Samarri Tyana Beauford, was playing in the living room of the home where she lived with her aunt and grandmother Saturday when she found a loaded .22-caliber pistol that police say Clark had left under the couch, Joyce said.

The Daily Collegian has printed many words on the several shooting situations that have occurred within the last year, and every time we have hoped that each instance was an isolated incident — a tragic event that we as a people would never allow to happen again.

But what were once called isolated incidents are now an endless disturbing nightmare from which we as a nation cannot wake up. Around 7:15 a.m. yesterday in Sparks, Nevada, two people were killed and two were injured in a shooting that took place on the Sparks Middle School property. The two fatalities included math teacher Michael Landsberry — who was reported to have died while protecting students — and the shooter, who is reported to have committed suicide.

The motive is yet unknown and the identity of the shooter has not been released.

Let's be blunt — these are not isolated incidents. Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, school violence has become a topic of much discussion but almost no progress, displaying almost trend-like prevalence. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 14 and 34 school-aged children are victims of homicide on school grounds on their way to and from school, each and every year. It hasn't even been a year since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that devastated the nation, and yet the Sparks Middle School shooting seems to have garnered relatively less attention.

Some major news outlets put President Obama's comments on the healthcare system roll-out first in their coverage, or published their top story as the legalization of gay marriage in New Jersey. On an ordinary day, those stories deserve to be the leading headlines on nightly news broadcasts, but yesterday was not an ordinary day.

The slow uptake on our response to the people of Sparks is alarming — are we becoming desensitized to school violence? We are more readily accepting school shootings as a part of our American life than we are our American duty to defend the defenseless.

Enough with partisan attitudes on gun control or making school violence an issue of "us vs. them." This is not a partisan issue — this is an issue of life or death for your relatives, your friends and you. This can happen anywhere. Our plea is not meant to scare you — we're certain that these shootings should be scary enough — but to call attention to our audacity to be angry in the face of tragedy, only to return to complacency and hope that this doesn't happen again.

It can happen again, and the statistics show that it probably will.

Who will be the one to stand up and say that this is enough? We spend so much time talking and almost no time acting — our rampant apathy will be our end if we do not choose to recognize our power as individuals. The leaders we've elected have failed us in creating or implementing policy that makes schools and public places safer for children and students. If we cannot turn to them, we must turn inwardly to ourselves.

Do not sit idly and wish that we've already seen the worst. For the love of your children and the children entering the difficult world in which we live, do something.